The GOP made a terrible mistake in nominating O'Donnell over Mike Castle. Castle is very popular statewide, and would likely have captured that seat. Instead, O'Donnell is going to lose the race; and all because Castle is not ideologically pure enough for the party. It's like going out on a long tree limb, sawing off the limb inward toward the trunk; then wondering why you find your *** on the ground.

I can't help but think (as an analogy) of the 1930s, when Stalin purged the Red Army of its most competent officers, because they were not as committed to Bolshevism as he thought they should be. When the Germans invaded on June 22, 1941, he found out that ideologically pure officers were not going to win the war for him. For the next four months, the Germans captured over 3 million Soviet prisoners (including 600,000 in one battle in the Ukraine). Stalin finally forgave the surviving officers of their trumped-up charges, restored their ranks, and turned them loose on the Germans. After Stalingrad in the winter of 1942-43, the Red Army literally pulverized the Wehrmacht.

I think there is a lesson to be learned here by the GOP in the ideological purity vs practicality debate.

Sorry for going off topic about this; but I thought the parallels were striking.